4h (edited) • Archeology, Art & Music!
Inspired by the Ancients
Art is the only true lense through which the modern world has ever been able to get a real glimpse at the ancient past. Art has been invaluable to the pursuit of archeological knowledge. When you imagine the old gods, you don't have to struggle so very hard because the ancient people already knew what they looked like! And from the most broad lense, you can clearly see that they were incredibly distinctive and identifiable!
We don't see several different re editions of what Thor or Zeus might have looked like or their general personalities. Throughout all forms of writing and even in UPG experiences, the known deities seem to be really clear. Thor and Zeus are good examples to pair because they are both gods of thunder, lightning, rain, the sky in general. But they have very different descriptions and obvious personality traits that don't really match.
This is where I take my perspective from, that all deities are who they are. Not the same deity by a different name just happening to be mentioned to some travellers who start a whole new religion about that same deity with a new name they just decided to make up and entirely different folkloric stories. That doesn't really make much sense to me! Pantheons are unique families that chose a place on earth to inhabit, develop, and teach humans how to thrive. The stories always say how the gods taught humans. Why shouldn't we believe them?
Not only has art depicted deities consistently but in some cultures, it was their very language! Ancient Egyptians, Sumarians, Native Americans, Meso Americans, many of these cultures had picture writing! Heiroglyphics, cuneiform, and many more! Some cultures used knotwork to tell stories or keep track of business information such as accounts of livestock and other things.
Humans have no shortage when it comes to the imagination and it has been how we have come to be who we are today! Anyone today who fails to give ancient people their due shows themselves to be ill educated. We didn't just magically get handed a modern system. It developed over time and ever more rapidly as the technology itself lended to our breakthroughs. Art is the best way we are able to see how things progressed! Just looking at art and it's progress through the ages is a perfect way to measure our understandings of the world and what we have gained today but also, so very very much of what we have lost in our often blind pursuit of progress.
When you look at the Roman Empire, look no further for those responsible for so much of the rapid change that occurred at that pinnacle point in history, the zero point! When we look at history, pure historical fact and archeological evidence, we can see that the empirical movements of Rome are the point in history where everything shifted from a Pagan world to one that was quickly being thrown into a mish mash of very confused ideas. People were being conscripted as Roman or taken captive, their identities stripped away and enslaved. Those who fought the Roman Empire were killed.
Romans threw people from all over various regions together and demanded that they no longer worship their old gods, or feel they are free people unless they were willing to become Roman. The iconic crucifix used as some sort of wonderful kissable symbol of Jesus was a torture device that killed in droves! Streets would be lined up with the dead on crosses, warning to all who attempted to cross the Romans. Soldiers, women, children. It didn't matter to the new world order.
The wider view shows us that just 300 years after Romans more or less killed Cleopatra and Mark Antony, the Pagan world began to fall. The Roman Catholic Empire was emerging as they decided to adopt the religious identity they accidently created! (My perspective, Romans invented the Jesus story to thwart a threat of uprising from the Jews in Jerusalem, look up Joseph Atwill's theory, Ceasar's Messiah for more info).
From this point on, Popes were the ruling power in the region and eventually most of the world! And they were always Roman. Funny that, only Romans could interpret the will of God? Why them? What makes them so special to be that people when actually Yahweh and the stories Jews followed had nothing whatsoever to do with Rome, Italy! Pretty weird if you ask me! Why did they give up their Pagan gods to spearhead a religion of an entirely different people?
Ultimately, the Roman gods became a thing of the past to the Romans and they fully too control. Through art, they began inspiring Christianity. The depictions of Jesus became absolutely paramount to convincing the wirld of his existence and that the stories compiled and the brief tiny merits that existed about or supposedly from Jesus. A whole new chapter of religious sovereignty began. And today the Vatican is a multi-billion dollar institution! Well, what an opportunity them Romans seized on, yeah? Sort of evil genius. Lol At the end of the day, art is how we understand all of it.
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Inspired by the Ancients
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